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The desert called so we pulled out the long boats and headed down the Baja way, first loading enough boats to take full advantage of both coasts, then cramming the truck full of every camping comfort it would take, right down to a hand-cranked margarita blender.

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Sean Morley knows a few things about going fast. He honed his forward stroke technique as a flatwater sprint racer on the British junior national team, but has made his biggest mark traveling far and fast in challenging conditions. He’s held speed records for crossing the Irish Sea, circumnavigating Vancouver Island, and paddling 4,500 miles around Great Britain and Ireland, solo.

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A private river trip on central Idaho’s mighty Selway has long been known as one of North America’s best, and most exclusive, ventures. Difficult access creates much of that challenging allure, as the Selway’s remote location compounds the scarcity of its private permits: The Forest Service issues only 62 to the lucky few of the thousands who apply in the annual lottery.

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“Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks offer some of the best paddling opportunities in the world for all abilities -- to live so near to these amazing rivers and yet be unable to experience them is a constant frustration for me and many other residents and visitors.”

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Last year, our readers were so impressed by the Trans-Territorial Canoe Expedition–a four-month, 2,600-mile canoe journey across Canada’s Northern Territories–that they voted it the Expedition of the Year at the 2013 C&K Awards. But for expedition-member Winchell Delano, crossing Canada’s far north from the Pacific Ocean to the Hudson Bay wasn’t enough. He is planning to go even bigger in 2015. Starting in January, Delano and five other paddlers (John Keaveny, Dan Flynn, Jarrad Moore, Adam Trigg, and Luke Kimmes) will canoe from the Gulf of Mexico to the Arctic Ocean over a period of nine months and cover a distance of approximately 5,200 miles. We caught up with Delano to get the details of the Rediscover North America expedition. C&K: Just the map of your expedition route is mind-boggling. Where did this idea come from? Winchell Delano: Part of your Expedition of the Year award included a $2,500 grant towards a future expedition. That is probably where everything started; that is, the incentive to plan something. Once the drive to plan the trip was in place, our goal was to try and surpass the previous undertaking in both distance and duration. In order to do so, we decided to orient

Antarctic Kayak Expedition

In December 2008, Cristian Donoso, Juan Pablo Ortega and Roger Rovira will travel to the Antarctic Peninsula to make a 550-mile self-supported kayak journey to the Palmer Archipelago and the Danco Coast to study wildlife density and explore the effects of global warming on the Antarctic coast.

Donoso hopes to inform the public about the consequences of global warming on the wildlife and sceneries of the Antarctic coast through photographic and audiovisual records of landscapes and wildlife in this region, from the low impact perspective of a kayak expedition. The materials collected will be used to create a documentary film, a book, magazine articles and a website.

“The Antarctic Peninsula is warming five times faster than the average rate of Earth’s overall warming. Many species that had evolved the capacity to live in these cold, icy and harsh conditions are now losing their only home,” reports Donoso.

Once reaching the Antarctic Peninsula, Donoso and his team will be completely self-supported without the assistance of any vessel, previous food or equipment deposits or any other kind of external help. Along with the inaccessibility of the coast, other geographical aspects that defy the expedition’s logistics are the isolation, the furious Antarctic storms and the ice flows formed by the agglomeration of icebergs pushed by the wind.

During the first month, Donoso’s team will circumnavigate the Anvers and Brabant Islands, first seen in February 1820 by Nathaniel Palmer on the voyage where he discovered Antarctica. During this first 300-mile stage, the team will survey the north coast of the Anvers Island- a coastline that is rarely explored due to its countless rocks, small islands and shallow waters exposed to the open sea. Also planned are visits to the bases Lockroy (England), Palmer (U.S.), and Islas Melchior (Argentina).

During the second month, the team will explore the Danco coast fjords, as deep as the ice flows allow it, navigating nearly 200 miles between the Chilean Gabriel Gonzalez Videla base and the Argentinean Primavera base. From there the team will cross to Trinidad Island, circumnavigating and exploring its coast until reaching the Mikkelsen Bay, where they will be picked up in late February by the Antarctic Dream.